We spent an enjoyable final day in Torino! We used the TO bikes to ride about 15 km to the Royal Hunting Palace, which is just outside the city limits. I imagine that when it was built, the city was a good distance away. We did a quick tour of the interior and were amazed at the " over-decorating"! Every wall and ceiling had some ornamental work. You could easily imagine the royal family entertaining their hunting parties in those rooms.
We were fortunate to meet a local fellow who gave us directions for taking a cycling path, mainly along...

My half marathon was this morning at 830 and thankfully it was not nearly as hot as it has been since we arrived.
My time was around 2 hr 14 min, depending if you look at "gun time" or chip time. If you are at the back of the crowd when the starting gun is fired, it could be several minutes before you actually pass the start line.
I wish I could have been faster, but I really did not do much training in preparation, so that is that.
While I was in the run, Brian's team was playing in the bronze medal match. It was a scoreless tie after...

Brian took the silver medal in squash by beating a fellow Canadian, Reg Atkins, of Calgary. As you can imagine, he, we and all the S'toon folks here are pretty happy about that.
The soccer team was not as fortunate and lost their morning game 1 - 0. They now have to play tomorrow morn and if they win, they get the bronze.
The other day we took a cycle/stroll through the medieval castle along the River Po and some kind stranger offered to snap our pic.
Tomorrow is my half marathon and Brian's last soccer game, so we will have a day of just...

A 1.5 hour train trip took us to the city of Alba, the city of a hundred towers which dates back to 90BC. Not much of the town remains from those days, but we did see fragments of this era in the local archeological museum.
We thought about taking a tour of some type into the surrounding wine-country, but there were none available that afternoon. This seems to happen to us frequently, maybe a clue that we need to do more advance planning?
We then checked out the bike rental situation, but in the end decided that there wasn't enough time to...

Like most everyone else who was up too late and ate too late, we slept in a bit so by the time I had a bit of a run And we finished breakfast it was very close to lunchtime.
We had thought we might go out of the city to see some countryside, but decided to save that for another day.
We heard that some others from our Saskatoon group had gone on a bicycle tour of major sights of Torino so we checked that out. Unfortunately, it is very expensive unless you can round up a very large group of friends to go with you.
We cycled over to a large...

It seems the days fly by here just as they do at home with me wondering at the end of the day just what I have accomplished.
I went out early for a run which turned into a walk. The heat is really sapping my energy and enthusiasm.
Then bussed over to Brian's soccer game, which they lost 2to1 but ended up winning a few hours later because the Italy team had too many players dressed and on the bench so they had to forfeit the win.
We went straight from the soccer field to the squash court. Brian had a game against a very large man from Brazil...

Another great breakfast at the hotel! Then off to watch the guys soccer game which is against a Calgary team and they hang on to win 1 to 0. Our registration fees include the use of all public transport within Torino which is great and the information package gives us the bus route and stop name that gets us closest to each venue, so we have not used a taxi yet!
We are also doing a lot of walking and cycling. Too much cycling, in fact. Today our pass cards for the Torino city Bike share stopped working. Investigation showed that we had...

Today was my 10km run. As well, Brian had both a soccer game and a squash match.
Here is the saga of my 10k run: (something will be here as soon as I figure out how to cut and paste using an iPad! )
Brian's team won their game by a score of 1 to o.
Brian won his squash match in 5 games.

No run for me this morning since I am saving my energy for the 10k tomorrow.
I have lost track of what we did for most of the day, but I recall I did spend a bit of time in the pool and I'm sure that we must have done some bike riding.
Assembling for the Opening Ceremonies began around 4:00 and was a rather hot and long drawn out process. The soccer crew made the best of it by checking out the beverages at all the pubs in the vicinity while they were waiting. Those of us in the running events were not quite so well hydrated.
The actual...

Same start to the day as yesterday! But a slightly different running route. It is about 0.5 km from our hotel to the trails along the River Po so that's where I go. Lots of people out for morning walks, especially those with dogs.
Did a bit more cycling early in the day.Brian continued on his own to check out the soccer venue and I checked out the spa area of the hotel.It is commercial business, but the pool, hot tub, sauna, etc are available free of charge to hotel guests. It is a very well kept and relaxing place to hang out. I then...

I started my day with a run followed by an excellent breakfast at the hotel's breakfast room. They have about everything you could want for a great start to your day! We spent a good part of the day exploring the city by bicycle. We went to the squash venue to check out its location and see if there was a schedule posted so that Brian would know when and where to return. We then cycled along the River Po for many Km and went up to an old church/museum that overlooks the city. The view was Ok, but partially obscured by smog. Had lunch at a...

We caught the morning train from Paris, which travelled almost directly south to Lyon, then easterly through a portion of the Alps to Turin ( aka Torino). Although the scenery was awesome, especially through the mountains, it wasn't possible to take a good photo because we were on a high speed train and by the time we noticed something of interest, it was long gone! The trip took about 5 hours since even high speed trains do slow down through mountains.
Once in Torino, we spent a bit of time trying to figure out how to get to our hotel, and...